Victim's Mafia past

The truth behind the man murdered in the Marriott Hotel at Marble Arch can be revealed today.

The 47-year-old was a convicted drug smuggler on the run from an Israeli prison with a British wife and two children living on the south coast.

Evening Standard investigations reveal that he is Israeli drug baron Simion Turkov - also known as Simon - who fled to Britain after escaping from Israel's Solomon prison more than a year ago.

Police believe Turkov, who has links to the Russian mafia, was killed in a gangland assassination after running up huge debts in Israel. Last week police named him as Yermia Yunataev after two suspected mafia men travelled to Britain via Eurotunnel to murder him before escaping across the Channel.

In fact Turkov, who held several false passports, was travelling in the name of Yunataev. He had served two years of an eight-year sentence for trying to smuggle 100,000 ecstasy tablets into Israel from Egypt. As soon as he was allowed his first home visit, he slipped out of the country.

Although Turkov, who is understood to have served time in a British prison for drug-related offences, was wanted for questioning by British police under his real name, his false passport helped him evade border controls.

He resettled in Britain, where he had lived in the Eighties and Nineties, with his British wife Maureen and their two daughters Mishka, 13, and Danielle, 16, in Poole, Dorset. He lived in a series of hotels and frequented casinos around London where he acquired a reputation as a big gambler.

But in Israel Turkov had made some powerful enemies. Security sources say he left a series of big debts. It is now believed his assassination was ordered as a result of the cash he owed members of the Russian mafia who control the flow of drugs into Israel.

Turkov's body was found on 28 March after Kent police discoveredbloodstained clothing and a compliments slip from the Marriott dumped near the Channel Tunnel terminal at Folkestone. He may have been beaten before being strangled or suffocated.

Turkov went to great lengths to conceal his identity. He had booked into the £240-a-night Marriott using a false Greek passport and at least one other passport in another nationality was discovered in the room. He was last seen leaving the bar at 9.50am when he went upstairs in the lift. He was found dead in his room at 8.20pm that evening.

Today his widow Maureen, from whom it is understood he was estranged, refused to comment from her home outside Poole.

Scotland Yard sources said: "It was a very professional job and will be difficult to solve. "

Officers have now travelled to Israel to carry out inquiries.

Detective Chief Inspector Julian Worker, who is leading the inquiry, said: "Mr Turkov has links to the Dorset area and may have had an address in the country.

"We are trying to piece together his last movements. I'd like to speak to estate agents, hotel owners or those who rent accommodation to discover if he was staying at their property. He may have been using another name.

"We are trying to trace the man seen walking with him along Gloucester Road in the early hours of that Sunday morning.

"I am still seeking a black Comcab driver who dropped Mr Turkov at the hotel at 9.05am."